Advent 5 Thursday: O Immanuel

O Immanuel, our Sovereign and Lawgiver, desire of the nations and Savior of all: Come and save us, O Lord our God. Come, Lord Jesus.

Advent 4: Wednesday: O Rex Gentium

O Ruler of the Nations, Sovereign for whom the people long, you are the Cornerstone uniting all humanity. Come, save us all, whom you formed out of clay. Come, Lord Jesus.

 

This is the sound of longing.

 

Advent 4 Tuesday: O Oriens

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, Sun of justice: Come, shine on those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death. Come, Lord Jesus.

On the longest night our longing turns towards the dawn.

In our day this night was marked by a full lunar eclipse, the first time the solstice has coincided with that celestial event since the 1600's. In my neck of the deep dark woods, there was too much cloud cover to be able to see. But for many this longest night offered a view of even the moon being extinguished, and the optical illusion created under these conditions that the stars around the moon are falling. At the sub-rational level, it feels like the end of all things.

But it is not the end of all things. It is, instead, the turning point. Beginning today the days will lengthen, slowly, incrementally, almost imperceptibly. So imperceptibly that the church, in a rare display of self-deprecating humor, celebrates this day that well-known "doubter," the apostle Thomas. I can only assume that, either we are celebrating him because we can revel in being for faithful because we are sure we know what's coming, or, perhaps more charitably, we know that Thomas knows that the Light truly is returning, has returned.

I offer you a poem by the wonderful Madeleine L'Engle, who, thanks to her marvelous book, "WinterSongs," has become an essential part of my Advent celebrations.

O come O come Emmanuel

within this fragile vessel here to dwell.

O Child conceived by heaven's power,

give me Thy strength: it is the hour.

O Come thou Wisdom from on high

like any babe, at life you cry;

for me, like any mother, birth

was hard, O light of earth.

O come, O come thou Lord of might

whose birth came hastily at night;

born in the stable, in blood and pain,

is this the king who comes to reign?

O come, thou rod of Jesse's stem,

the stars will be thy diadem.

How can the infinite finite be?

Why choose, child, to be born of me?

O come, thou key of David, come,

and open the door to my heart-home.

I cannot love thee as a king--

so fragile and so small a thing.

O come, thou Day-spring from on high,

I saw the signs that marked the sky.

I heard the beat of angel's wings;

I saw the shepherds and the kings.

O come, desire of nations, be

simply a human child to me.

Let me not weep that you are born.

The night is gone. Now gleams the morn.

Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel,

God's Son, God's Self, with us to dwell.

Advent 4 Monday: O Clavis David

O Key of David, Scepter over the house of Israel, you open and no one can close, you close and no one can open: Come to set free the prisoners who live in darkness and the shadow of death. Come, Lord Jesus.

 

At a certain point in my life I realized I had spent a lot of time banging on, and then clawing on, doors that were closed to me.  I mean this, of course, in an emotional sense. It had to do with relationships in which the person I cared for withdrew and I was left feeling like I was out in the cold (a metaphor that has come home to me this year in a new way, as we have both experienced record-breaking cold temperatures where I live, AND as I have been unusually cold myself this year). 

I carried around this image of myself clawing at doors that would never open to me. At a certain point I realized it had to do with, childhood stuff, blah blah blah. I also realized that I had closed doors to others-- one significant way in which I had done this was by piling on about 200 extra pounds. I was an impenetrable fortress, not exactly a "decision" I made, but also not something I felt equipped to do anything about until much, much later. 

The Messianic title we remember today is "Key of David," the One who is truly in charge of opening and closing doors-- whether they be the doors to our hearts or the bars that wall in prisoners. I have learned, on my journey, that the opening of those doors was made possible only by yielding that control to the One who was always in control anyway.

Advent 4 Sunday: O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, rising as a sign for all the peoples, before you earthly rulers will keep silent, and nations give you honor: Come quickly to deliver us. Come, Lord Jesus.

I have written about this before, here. The Christmas of my freshman year in college (what will that be like for Petra?), I almost didn't come home for Christmas. 

My family had a long-standing tradition of ignoring Christmas at home (the apartment above the store) and throwing ourselves-- all of ourselves-- into Christmas in the business. My brother and I wrapped bottles, we decorated windows. But upstairs-- it wasn't Christmas, there were no carols played on record players, there was no tree after the year I was 7. There were some good reasons for this: retail, especially small-business-family-owned-and-operated retail, is exhausting at this time of year. I look at Beloved, working 63 hours a week right now. But also, my mother hated Christmas. I don't know whether it was because of traumatic childhood memories of deprivation, or some other circumstance she never shared with me. But she hated it. The music, the decor, the tree.

So beginning the Christmas I was 8, we always went to Florida. My mom would take my brother and me as soon as school was out,  and my dad would join us on Christmas day. And-- please understand-- I loved it. I am a swimmer, always have been, and my joy and delight was to be in the pool or the ocean all day, every day. I had a tradition of diving into the pool at midnight on New Year's.... that was my real celebration. I was a very fortunate little girl. I wanted for nothing.

Except, I wanted Christmas. So, when one of my roommates invited me  to her home for the holidays, a place her parents always decked out in grand Christmas fashion, I leapt at the idea. And I told my mother. And after a brief pause, she said, "We will have a tree this year."

So I went home. And when I got there, there was a naked tree in the living room, and a box of decorations and some lights. And I set about decorating the tree all alone, while listening to a Christmas record I'd bought at the Harvard C00p; "Christmas in Cambridge" with the Harvard/ Radcliffe Glee Club. And I was happy.

I've thought about this memory a lot this year, one reason being, I've been very late getting my tree (it finally made it into the house last night), and I have been hesitant to get it, partially, because of what's been going on with Petra. I was afraid the idea of the tree would be unwelcome to her-- well, not unwelcome, exactly, but more work, more stress. I had to decide I was willing to decorate the tree alone, and that would be just fine. I decided it would be.

The anthem here, Virga Jesse by Anton Bruckner, was on that Christmas record, the first I'd ever owned-- the first ever to make its way into my childhood home. Here is the translation of the lyrics:

The branch from Jesse blooms:
a Virgin brings forth God and man:
God restores peace,
reconciling in Himself the lowest with the highest.
Alleluia.

This O antiphon has a way, always, of filling me with a kind of awe... here is the mystery, that the roots planted there, blossom here in the most thrilling and unexpected and glorious way. As I drove home last night with the tree nestled in the car (the trunk was right next to me, and the smell of the pine was glorious), I gave thanks for the roots that make my delight in this season so deep and sweet.

Tears, some joyful, some not

I received the news as I was driving home from an enormous grocery store trip-- the kind of trip where you stock up on your canned goods, and your dried fruit, and your pasta and your rice and your eggs. It was a big trip, and long, because-- my goodness, a week before Christmas, and I suppose there are many parties between now and then. And so, my favorite grocery store was jammed with people, most of whom were in fairly pleasant-to-festive moods.

So I headed home with my trunk full of food, and the sun was shining to warm up the inside of my car on a cold day, and I heard my cell phone thunk with a text message. Assuming it was Petra, I took the next safe opportunity (a red light) to steal a quick look.

It was a text from the Human Rights Campaign. The procedural vote to permit the real vote on repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell had passed. It was all but certain: that wretched, unjust law that makes the US less safe by denying gifted and educated and trained military personnel the opportunity to serve was going down. At last.

I immediately broke into tears. Real tears. I sobbed. It took me by surprise, actually, the force of my tears. Sometimes we don't understand the weight of what we blithely call "current events" until they take us by the shoulders and give us a good shake.

I called Beloved, and told her. "It's done. They're repealing it. Don't Ask Don't Tell is no more." And my love, who was in hear early twenties when Stonewall was in the news, joined me in my emotion. She didn't cry. She was jubilant. She just kept saying, "Isn't it amazing when the right thing happens?"

Here is a photo, from the NY Times, of someone who is weeping, but not from joy. This was taken after the Dream act was defeated, a piece of legislation that would have enabled those in this country without documentation, but who are clearly striving to be productive members of our society, a chance, a shot at that fabled great American dream. I suppose the Senate only had it in them to free one group from bondage today.

Some tears of joy. Some tears of frustration, anger... but I pray not despair. I believe Martin Luther King was right. The arc of history bends towards justice. It is but a matter of time.

Advent 3 Saturday: O Adonai

O Adonai, Ruler of the house of Israel, you appeared in the burning bush to Moses and gave him the law on Sinai: Come with outstretched arm to save us. Come, Lord Jesus.

The title given to the Messiah here is "Adonai," Hebrew for "Lord." Adonai is used as a placeholder in the Hebrew bible for the unspeakable, unpronounceable, most holy name of God. Though the text may read the four letters-- yod, heh, vav, heh, which many Christians pronounce "Yahweh" or "Jehovah"-- the cantor in a synagogue will replace that word with "Adonai."

Of course, Adonai also means "Lord" in much the same way "Lord" has been understood as designating a man of great nobility-- as in the house of lords. So the use of Adonai as a Hebrew Messianic title does not automatically take us to the mystery of the incarnation. But the resonance is there for us, as Christians.

Here, a choir from Rome singing "O Adonai" with some fascinating silent film footage illustrating Moses and the Lord on Mount Sinai:

And here, something I wish I'd found yesterday: music of Hildegard of Bingen, "O virtus sapientiae":

Is it wrong for me to want to hear women's voices in these late Advent days?